NEUVILLE LEADS A ROUT IN AUSTRALIA
BELGIAN SIGNS OFF WRC IN WINNING STYLE
Hyundai had been here before. Regularly, and all too often this season. The i20 Coupe WRC was leading, leading well and looking good for another World Rally Championship win. Then it wasn’t. Another odds-on 25-pointer down the swanny. This time, however, halfway up the creek, a paddle was found.
Where Andreas Mikkelsen left off, Thierry Neuville picked up and the Korean team’s dominance of Rally Australia was complete. The Belgian’s fourth win of the year sealed a seasonal silver for him. Not that he cared much about that.
This season’s lost. He’s already moved onto a bigger picture with 2018 increasingly big in the frame.
Hyundai turned a page in New South Wales last week and, for the first time since it returned to the World Rally Championship in 2014, looked like a genuine force to be reckoned with.
It’s impossible to praise Mikkelsen highly enough for what he did in Australia and for what he’s achieved in recent months. He won this rally 12 months ago, but arrived at final service with another sticker on the front of his Volkswagen Polo R WRC. Remember it? It was a hand-written livery addition that read: “For hire.” Granted, the reference could have been man or machine. Either way, a year ago the Norwegian faced nothing but uncertainty.
Ultimately, he lost out on a Toyota seat that had his name on and was faced with a bit-part with Skoda and Citroen before a Hyundai deal was sealed for the final three rallies of this year and beyond.
Leading two of those final three 2017 rallies, Mikkelsen has signaled his intentions for next year. And, in doing so, he’s raised expectation of Hyundai higher than ever.
Mikkelsen surrendered a 15-second lead when he suffered two punctures while carrying just one spare on Saturday morning. Sitting on a tree stump on Rock Road, Bowraville, he was hurting.
“I wanted this one,” he said. “It would have just taken the pressure off to get the first win in before the start of next year…”
A couple of hours later, with the onboard footage loaded into his phone, he shared the evidence of the fourth-gear right over crest that had undone his plan. “That was it,” he said showing me. Can’t be. “I know,” he said. “But it was. Ninety-nine times in 100 you get away with those.”
Ninety-nine times out of 100 drivers say they were unlucky. Mikkelsen really was. Neuville empathised. A bit. “I gave him some pressure,” he said. “We took some time out of his lead in the stage before…”
Neuville’s self-confidence rarely dips beneath stratospheric and he’s going to need that next season. For the first time across the spread of a season, he’s going to face significant competition from his mate around the corner in Monaco.
The passing of time eased Mikkelsen’s pain. Yes, back-to-back wins would have been nice, but 12 months on, he was in full-time employment and standing on the edge of a first genuinely serious title tilt.
“It’s true,” he said, “this isn’t life and death. It’s been a lot worse this year. Poland was quite frustrating for me. Everybody was thinking I had lost it when I did that rally with Citroen.”
Having manhandled a recalcitrant C3 WRC between the trees to a miserable ninth place in Mikolajki, Mikkelsen headed home from Poland in a sombre mood.
“It was nice that I got the chance with Citroen,” he said, “but I was helping to develop the car for them. I was bringing experience from the Polo. But in Poland I got the feeling that some people looked and said: ‘Look how slow he is…’ That was quite frustrating.
“When I got to the next rally in Germany I said: ‘OK, now I will focus on myself’. I knew the car would be better on asphalt and this was a chance for me to do something. With second place, I felt I got my name back a little bit.”
And the last three rallies have turned the lights on his name. And in Australia those lights turned on Hyundai and its double podium.
The searching beam of the spotlight of success revealed a team divided: the haves and have-nots. The havenots being, of course, Hayden Paddon and Dani Sordo. The drivers who have not got a full programme in 2018.
As Neuville himself would testify, Hyundai’s team manager Alain Penasse is a man who says what he thinks. A couple of years ago, the Belgian was accused of prioritising the quality of his hotel ahead of his performance on the road, shortly before he was dropped to Hyundai’s B team. In late 2015, Paddon was going in the opposite direction: he was moving on up.
The juxtaposition at the final service last Sunday was incredible. Neuville arrived into the arms of his team with a powerslide, a flourish and a bootful of revs, drowning out Paddon’s interview as he sought to explain the finale to a torrid season.
Penasse said: “We are quite aware that his [Paddon’s] head is a big part of the problem. We have been talking with his management a lot over the last two months. In New Zealand it was always Hayden’s story, so we started to talk to them in GB and here to find more information. We have to work together to get him out of this situation.
“It’s best for him and us to get out of what’s going on right now, but it’s very difficult to read Hayden. With others, it’s quite simple, but Hayden’s quite closed.
“We know that Hayden has the objective to be world champion in 2018. After [his victory] in Argentina last year, I would say that was a sensible objective. Now I don’t think so. After Argentina [last year] he had the car fire in Portugal, then he crashed in Sardinia and everything started to go downhill and he started to doubt about it. At the start of this year he missed most of Monte Carlo, Sweden was not fantastic and then there was a problem in Mexico and he got a bad road position. He starts thinking and worrying and he doesn’t come out of it any more. You know, if we have s**t in life, you have to put it aside and walk away from it. You cannot keep going back on it.
“I have been quite clear that he should review his objective for 2018. He didn’t understand why we wanted to give priority to Andreas, but for us it’s simple: we don’t think he will match his objective in 2018. He was angry.”
Until last week, Paddon had steadfastly refused to be drawn into a public debate of what he considered a private matter with his employer. But against what one team member described as a ‘poisonous’ atmosphere, Paddon spoke out.
“I feel like an outsider,” he said. “At this level everything has to come naturally and one of the most important things is to feel comfortable in the environment. I feel like I’m forcing everything and I feel like I’m looking in on this team from the outside. Right now, nothing feels natural.
“Look, I know I’ve made mistakes and we’ve had some problems, but I haven’t thrown the toys out of the cot. I’ve stayed patient and calm and not pointed fingers. I don’t really feel like the same can be said in reverse.”
Paddon suffered a nightmare start to the season when he was involved in a fatal accident with a spectator on the Monte Carlo, and since then things have spiralled downwards.
He has suffered the brunt of Hyundai’s mechanical frailties, but of more concern than that is the fact that he simply hasn’t been allowed to dial himself into the i20 Coupe WRC. He hasn’t been comfortable with a 2017 car, which is at odds with his aggressive, steer-with-the-rear style.
The Kiwi’s biggest problem now is that Mikkelsen’s set-up is very similar to that of Neuville, offering little incentive for Hyundai to invest time and money in developing a car in the direction of a driver who will only be
running a part programme in 2018. With Sordo absent in Australia last week, Paddon cut a lonely figure as he stood in the corner of a team he once called home, looking across at the blossoming bonhomie between Neuville and Mikkelsen The bottom line is, however, that Neuville ends this year on the crest of a wave with Mikkelsen paddling away ready to hop on the next roller that comes along. Hyundai is ready. “We are the complete team now,” said Penasse. “It’s clear during the year that we saw on so many occasions that we were missing a second Thierry. Unfortunately Dani and Hayden didn’t fulfil the role of the second Thierry, but with Andreas, it’s clear that after three rallies he is here.”
There’s no doubting Neuville’s return this season and his form on last week’s event was imperious. When the rain came on Sunday, he danced between the puddles and walked on water.
Getting to the finish of a washed-out Wedding Bells stage, Neuville’s eyes were on stalks.
“That was really tricky,” he said. “A hell of a ride, but I kept it on the road.”
Crucially, he reversed a trend which had him dropping time to Jari-matti Latvala’s Toyota and allowing the Yaris to close to 9.9s with three stages remaining.
“When you see Jari-matti doing his push-ups in the morning, you know it’s going to be a big attack,” said Neuville. “And it was. When I went to sleep last night, I was comfortable but when I saw the rain this morning then I had some pressure on my shoulders. But it was OK. This is a good way to finish the season.”
Nandan agreed. But quickly added that there was a better way.
“We didn’t give this championship away, we lost it,” he said. “Now we must go away and come back stronger next time.”
There’s no doubt Hyundai will start next season stronger and more capable, but will it be united? Walls need to be broken down and rebuilt, papering over the cracks only brings more grief further down the line. And judging by the number of Paddon’s Pack supporters club members crowding into the service park, there would be no shortage of volunteers to help break down those walls.
That building work might not be needed, however, if Hyundai’s rivals continue to flounder in the way they did last week. A mixture of misfortune and misdemeanours hit M-sport, Toyota and Citroen, ensuring they would struggle to put together three trouble-free days to battle with the Korean cars.
The terrain didn’t help, with this year’s WRC finale proving to be a typically tough Aussie affair. The heat of the southern hemisphere summer ensured tyre choices were constantly compromised, while a Sunday morning monsoon sent the teams scurrying for anything left in a remotely soft compound.
The combination of forest and shire roads (think flowing, double-width country lanes covered in ball bearingsmall loose gravel) worked perfectly once again; that this event provides some of the best stages in the world is beyond doubt. And running them through the backdrop of banana plantations, rainforests, koalas and kangaroos once again had those behind a camera in raptures. But, post-2018, this event faces a serious dilemma. WRC Promoter and the FIA want out of Coffs Harbour, but they want to remain in Australia. The challenge for the organisers of the event is to find a fourth home for this event in little over a decade.
By definition a world championship needs something this far south and I’ll resist the temptation to point them in the direction of the Tasman’s far side to the land of the long white cloud; the New Zealand drum has been beaten into submission. For now.
One man who cares little for the location of future Antipodean WRC adventures is Neuville. With a little help from his friend, he rocked and ruled down under last week. And, just before stepping on an equator-bound plane, he delivered the line.
“We were not the world champion this year,” he said. “But we drove like world champions and I am proud of that.”
Boom.